Entrepreneurial Drive interview: the best story examples
Through more than a thousand interviews that I have done as a McKinsey partner, I have seen very few candidates with a good understanding of what is important in the Personal Experience Interview. I’ve heard a lot of stories about proud moments and great achievements, but few of them came from the heart and truly allowed me to better understand who the person across the table was.
In this article, I will focus on Entrepreneurial Drive, one of the skills that is being tested during McKinsey PEI interviews. I will share examples of good Entrepreneurial Drive stories that I still remember after many years, reflect on why they were memorable, and explain how they addressed the elements that I was looking for as a McKinsey interviewer.
Before you proceed with the article, just a reminder that when you are done reading, you might also want to review our PEI digital course videos, that include a recorded example of an Entrepreneurial drive interview with in-depth analysis of all the assessed dimensions, typical mistakes and frequently asked questions.
My first pick is an Entrepreneurial Drive story that I heard in an interview almost ten years ago.
Alice (not the candidate’s real name) came from a family with very limited means in an East African country. Her mother had passed away when she was in her pre-teen years, and she grew up with her father and three brothers.
Learning had always come easy for her, and she was doing very well in the elementary, middle, and high school equivalents. Alice liked studying, and she realized from very early on that education was the path out of poverty.
Her father was supportive of her continuing her education to achieve an undergraduate degree but he made two things very clear. First, she should not expect any financial support from him as he had a very basic employment and limited resources. Second, he expected her to take full care of the household, and do all the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and other duties.
Her only chance to get a shot at a university degree was to get one of the few tuition-free seats awarded to students with absolute top academic performance. While set on this target, her life pretty much only involved school, household duties, and late-night studies in the light of a kerosene lamp.
Alice did manage to get one of those few scholarships to law school, but once she had made it there, her life didn’t change for the better. She would walk for more than an hour to get to the university (of course staying at a dormitory was no option given her financial status and her obligations at home), then walk back home, pick up groceries on the way, cook and clean, help her brothers with their homework, and then study until she would fall asleep.
To add to the challenge, shortly after Alice started her university studies, her father lost his employment. That was when she reached a real low point and struggled to see how she could carry on with her studies. She somehow pulled herself together though, and picked up a side job, which she managed to find close to her university. She ended up holding on to that job throughout her time in academia, even though her father eventually found new employment. She never earned enough to afford a bike or some other vehicle for her commute though, since all her money went to her family. When I met her, she had just received her diploma.
This story might sound mundane since the only outcome was “just” getting a law degree, which is something that millions of people around the world have done. But the reality is that this was not just one of the most memorable stories I’ve heard in an Entrepreneurial Drive interview, but also one of the best when it comes to covering all the elements that I would look for as an interviewer. We will discuss them one by one later in the article.
My second pick is a more recent Entrepreneurial Drive story.
Jenny (Also not her name) had moved a couple of years earlier from her home city in Europe, to try her luck in Southeast Asia. She had left a well-paid job in the city where she was born, grew up, went to college, started her career, and lived for her whole life up until then. When she decided to move to Asia, it was because she felt that living in the same city for what might as well become her whole life was a scary thing and that she was at risk of missing out on experiences that would enrich her life.
I remember her telling me that she regretted that she hadn’t even done what all her other friends did in their early twenties, a backpacking trip. Something was out there for her, and she wanted to find out what it was. So, she applied for jobs in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Jenny quickly got a job offer in Jakarta and moved there to join a big multinational company’s regional headquarters.
She was not at all mentally prepared for what was to come. Living on her own in this new huge city without friends or relatives nearby made her feel more alone than she had ever felt in her life before that. Her job was more demanding than she had anticipated, and she ended up working very long hours every weekday, and often on weekends too.
And in addition, she had a tough time understanding the new culture, particularly at the workplace. Oftentimes, she would walk out from meetings thinking something was decided or appreciated, only to hear through back channels that something else had happened entirely, without her understanding or catching it, which made her question herself and feel even more lonely.
After less than six months, she was close to giving up and heading back home. But knowing that she had come all the way there to find something, she couldn’t allow herself to do that even though every part of her wanted to just give up. And with the help of a therapist, she found both her inner motivations to stay and the tools to break out from her perceived isolation.
She started to attend local community events and cooking classes and learned how to ask “stupid questions” to challenge people so that they would tell her what was really going on in meetings and did a lot of other small things. When I met her, it was 18 months after she hit her low point. Since then, she had been promoted to a more senior role at her current company and was determined to stay in Asia.
Again, this is nothing more than a story of someone overcoming an initial cultural shock after moving to a new place, something that happens to a lot of people, and not something that at first sight might seem like a typical example of entrepreneurial drive. And still, it is a story that is memorable to me and one that has all the elements required from an interviewer’s perspective. Why? Continue reading.
What are the elements that I found in those stories that made them memorable Entrepreneurial Drive interviews?
Authenticity. Both of those interviews were examples of stories just picked out from their daily lives. There were no attempts to come up with big achievements you would put in a CV. I asked both to come up with examples from when they had to push themselves hard for something they wanted, and they both gave answers that felt like they just told their story to someone sitting next to them on the subway. They were not hiding their negative emotions, but instead talked about how they tackled them. Real people.
Self-awareness. Maybe because they picked stories that were personal and close to them, rather than something to “show off”, they managed to go into detail about what they thought, said, or felt at specific points, and how they acted and reacted. This is the level you want to get to as an interviewer. Not to hear what “the team achieved” but to understand what you did and how you felt.
Determination. An important part to be able to demonstrate in entrepreneurial drive interviews is your ability to set your own goals and take initiative to act on those. In both cases, it was clear that their motivation came from something that they had set themselves up to do because they really wanted it, not because they were told or expected to do it.
Toughness. This is one of the most important elements. As an interviewer, I want to assess whether the candidate has the resilience and determination to overcome obstacles, even under extraordinary circumstances. And this can only be shown in situations where there was some kind of low point. When you felt almost ready to give up but didn’t. The question is not if you are willing to work hard when things are going well. The question is if you are still able to do that when things are not. Both candidates showed me that they were, and they showed it by talking about their emotions, not just the positive ones.
Sacrifice. An important skill in consulting is 80/20; the ability to focus your effort on the 20% of tasks that deliver 80% of the value. You need to be able to prioritize and make tradeoffs. That’s one of the reasons your interviewer will often look for sacrifices you made when you set yourself a goal and worked hard to achieve it. In the case of the candidates above, they both did.
Try to incorporate all those elements into the story you tell during your entrepreneurial drive interview. Your story doesn’t need to be about a big professional achievement. It needs to come from your heart and highlight the things that matter. Don’t be surprised if the interviewer goes into great depth of story details, even emotional ones. They are digging for examples that illustrate the points above.
Everyone has good stories to tell. We can help you identify the right stories for the PEI interviews and learn how to tell them so that the all the required elements shine through. You can find a lot of helpful information in our PEI digital course or in our PEI coaching sessions.
Watch full Entrepreneurial drive interview example to learn more.
